Tools

Cathy Davidson

When: Wed., Aug. 22, 7-8 p.m. 2012

It's been a year since Duke professor Cathy Davidson's anti-Luddite manifesto, Now You See It, came out. Ask yourself: Are we closer to the technotopia she paints as the best of all possible futures, with the ways we "live, work and learn" transformed by our new digital tools? Or are outmoded habits of the industrial age, such as rigidly structured classrooms and inflexible workplaces, still holding us back? Aug. 22 marks the paperback release (how quaint!) of this wide-ranging, thought-provoking book. An early chapter on infant development is alone worth the $9.99 download—sorry, $16 list price. Davidson appears at 7 p.m. —Marc Maximov